Belief in Conspiracy Theories and Susceptibility to the Conjunction Fallacy

By Robert Brotherton, Christopher C. French. 2014

209 citations recorded by the source corpus.

Summary: People who believe in the paranormal have been found to be particularly susceptible to the conjunction fallacy. The present research examines whether the same is true of people who endorse conspiracy theories. Two studies examined the association between conspiracist ideation and the number of conjunction violations made in a variety of contexts (neutral, paranormal and conspiracy). Study 1 found that participants who endorsed a range of popular conspiracy theories more strongly also made more conjunction errors than participants with weaker conspiracism, regardless of the contextual framing of the conjunction. Study 2, using an independent sample and a generic measure of conspiracist ideation, replicated the finding that conspiracy belief is associated with domain-general susceptibility to the conjunction fallacy. The findings are discussed in relation to the association between conspiracism and other anomalous beliefs, the representativeness heuristic and the tendency to infer underlying causal relationships connecting ostensibly unrelated events. Copyright © 2014 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd. A conspiracy theory can be defined as an unverified and relatively implausible allegation of conspiracy, claiming that significant events are the result of a secret plot carried out by a preternaturally sinister and powerful group of people (Brotherton, 2013). Such theories are a prominent feature of contemporary culture. Substantial numbers of people believe conspiracy theories regarding the role of the US government in the 9/11 terrorist attacks, the death of Princess

Subfields: Cognitive Neuroscience, Literature and Literary Theory, Sociology and Political Science

View Paper: https://www.semanticscholar.org/paper/18bf766c429017a9c858b10222d0ed1d43819aec

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Citations in the corpus

Attitudes Towards Science (2018, background): “It does not appear to respect principles of parsimony, as illustrated by studies that show people who accept conspiracy theories are also prone to committing reasoning errors (Brotherton & French, 2014).”
Mistrust and misinformation: A two-component, socio-epistemic model of belief in conspiracy theories (2020, unknown): “…biases (Douglas et al., 2016; van Elk, 2015; van Prooijen, Douglas, & De Inocencio 2018, Wagner-Egger et al., 2018); conjunction fallacies (Brotherton & French, 2014); need for control, certainty, cognitive closure, and uniqueness (Imhoff & Lamberty, 2017; Lantian et al., 2017;…”
Someone is pulling the strings: hypersensitive agency detection and belief in conspiracy theories (2016, background): “Furthermore, Brotherton and French (2014) found that people who endorsed conspiracy theories were more likely to commit the conjunction fallacy the tendency to overestimate the likelihood of co-occurring events (Tversky & Kahneman, 1983).”
“I Know Things They Don’t Know!”: The Role of Need for Uniqueness in Belief in Conspiracy Theories (2017, background): “In terms of cognitive processes, people with stronger conspiracy beliefs are more likely to overestimate the likelihood of co-occurring events (Brotherton & French, 2014), to attribute intentionality where it is unlikely to exist (Brotherton & French, 2015; Douglas, Sutton, Callan, Dawtry, &…”
Measuring Belief in Conspiracy Theories: Validation of a French and English Single-Item Scale (2016, background): “This category of belief is defined as an unverified and relatively implausible allegation of conspiracy, claiming that significant events are the result of a secret plot carried out by a preternaturally sinister and powerful group of people (Brotherton & French, 2014, p. 238).”
Putting the stress on conspiracy theories: Examining associations between psychological stress, anxiety, and belief in conspiracy theories (2016, background): “…Morgan, Towell, Altemeyer, & Swami, 2014; Swami, Weis, Lay, Barron, & Furnham, 2016), biased cognitions (e.g., errors of probabilistic reasoning; Brotherton & French, 2014), and individual differences in traits such as thinking styles, political cynicism, and self-esteem (e.g., Abalakina-Paap,…”
Why conspiracy theories matter: A social psychological analysis (2018, background): “Conspiracy beliefs have been linked to the conjunction fallacy – an error in probabilistic reasoning where people overestimate the likelihood of co-occurring events (Brotherton & French, 2014; Dagnall, Denovon, Drinkwater, Parker & Clough, 2017).”
The Psychology of Conspiracy Theories (2017, background): “It is also associated with the tendency to overestimate the likelihood of co-occurring events (Brotherton & French, 2014) and the tendency to perceive agency and intentionality where it does not exist (Douglas et al., 2016).”